Mexico has appealed to the International Court of Justice to expel Ecuador from the United Nations after police raided its embassy in Quito late at night.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said Mexico filed a complaint with the court on Thursday, calling Ecuador’s actions a violation of international law.
“The court should authorize the expulsion in accordance with the United Nations Charter, and it should not veto it,” Lopez Obrador said at a news conference.
On social media, Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena echoed the president’s statement, saying Ecuador should be held “accountable for the blatant violation of the inviolability of our embassy and attacks on our personnel.”
“The letter and spirit of international law guide our steps,” she wrote.
The Mexican case centers on a controversial police raid that led to the capture of former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, who had sought refuge in the Mexican embassy in Quito to avoid arrest.
Embassies are considered protected spaces. Although they are not “foreign soil” – a common misconception – international law prohibits local police from accessing them.
This, in turn, allows embassy staff to carry out their work without fear of arrest or harassment by local authorities.
For example, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations of 1961 states: “The premises of [diplomatic] The mission is sacrosanct. The representatives of the receiving state may only enter it with the consent of the head of mission.”
However, this “rule of inviolability” has also been used by political dissidents and other figures to avoid arrest by seeking refuge in a foreign embassy.
For example, Glas was convicted twice on bribery and corruption charges. He was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017 and again in 2020 to an eight-year prison sentence.
Glas had been seeking refuge in the Mexican embassy since December, and shortly before his arrest on Friday, President Lopez Obrador had offered him political asylum in Mexico.
But late Friday evening, Ecuadorian police climbed over the wall of the Mexican embassy, burst through its doors and pointed a gun at one of its chief diplomats.
A video released by the Mexican government on Wednesday shows the official, diplomat Roberto Canseco, being thrown to the ground as he tried to block police vehicles leaving the embassy with glass inside.
Mexico has since called for Ecuador to be suspended from the UN. It said the suspension could not be lifted until Ecuador “provides a public apology acknowledging its violations of the fundamental principles and norms of international law.”
President Lopez Obrador’s government also severed diplomatic relations with Ecuador as a result of Glas’s arrest.
Other countries and international organizations also expressed concern and outrage over the police raid, calling it a violation of international law.
On Tuesday, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said his administration was convinced “these actions were wrong” based on security footage of the police raid.
The Organization of American States (OAS) also released a statement saying that “strict adherence” to international law is “essential” to diplomatic relations.
Additionally, OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro suggested that the glass situation should have been handled differently.
Neither “the use of force, illegal intrusion into a diplomatic mission nor the detention of an asylum seeker is the peaceful way to resolve this situation,” he said.
However, Ecuador has defended its decision to storm the Mexican embassy. President Daniel Noboa’s government has questioned whether Glas meets the requirements to receive political asylum and reiterated its commitment to fighting corruption within its borders.
Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld also said that a public apology “is not currently under discussion.”
Glas is now on hunger strike in his prison in Guayaquil. He was briefly hospitalized on Monday.
Rafael Correa, the former president during whose term Glas served, said the former vice president attempted suicide after his arrest.
Correa himself lives in exile in Belgium and is threatened with a prison sentence in his home country of Ecuador, also on corruption charges.